. >> james lawson has been to india and comes back with this store house of gandhiian tactics. >> martin king said come to nashville now, we need you now. so i went to nashville and organized other people. >> now, tonight, we have a most important business to try to accomplish, and that is to try to have one major role-playing experience, which sort of tries to set the stage for an actual demonstration for an actual sit-in. >> you talk about the civil rights movement in the '60s is, people often talk about selma and birmingham and montgomery, but the incubator of it all was tennessee where james lawson started teaching his lessons about nonlessons. teaching people like james louis and. >> dan: nash how to not swing back if somebody hits you with a nightstick. >> we actually practiced sitting in. some took the role of students who were sitting at a lunch counter, and others took the role of white thugs. we were practicing how to remain non-violent even in the face of violence. >> there had been other sit-ins in those early months of 1960, but no one is centrally organizing or coordinating